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Month: December 2017

“Per pale” comes to an end and is replaced by “Per pall” today. Being a heraldic fur fan I’ve got to call out Marie de Blois’s “Per pale pean and erminois” top left as a favourite in this batch, although Erin Hendersonne’s “Per pale ranyonny sable and Or” next to it is also elegant.

Part Fourteen! Click for larger, see text for details.

Walthari von Harz’s device, leftmost middle row, might get put back in the “to be redrawn” pile, even this late in the game, as I’m still not happy with how the per pale wavy line interacts with the points and edges of the chevronelly elements. There’s another emblazon I found online (but now can’t rediscover to show here!) with a much more elegant version that I’d like to try and replicate.

Today is a long run of Per pale divisions with some nice use of tincture and three devices of nine with various blanket permissions to conflict (PtC) on file, which I always like to see with Field Primary devices because it makes it just a bit easier for other SCAdians to enjoy cool Field Primary devices of their own!

Lucky Part Thirteen! Click for larger, see text for details.

It’s genuinely hard to pick a favourite in this batch, they’re all nice solid designs! Being a fan of the heraldic furs I’ll favour Brigit the Chaste’s “Per pale indented gules and counter-ermine”, leftmost of the middle row a little bit, though.

I’m also amazed that the two devices on the bottom row centre and right, Nerienda of Farleigh’s “Per pale Or and argent” and Edward Langhere’s “Per pale Or and azure” took until 2016 to be snapped up, and I’m very pleased they both filed PtC to make it easier for others. It goes to show that lots of simple, classic armoury is still out there if you’re willing to look in the O&A’s gaps!

Part Twelve takes us out of the long run of “Per fess” devices and into the long run of “Per pale” ones, with a few detours between.

Part Twelve! Click for larger, see text for details.

Some nice combinations of field divisions in this batch, especially the stripey angles of the two “Per pale and chevronelly” devices, Eadan Munro’s “Per pale and chevronelly inverted gules and argent” top right and Kenric æt Essexe’s “Per pale and chevronelly Or and sable”, leftmost on the middle row.

EDIT to add, 19 January 2018: Duke Kenric æt Essexe was lost in a boating accident on January 12 2018. He was three times King of the East, held numerous awards, and sounds like he was an amazing man. The EK Gazette has a long and detailed obituary. Here’s his entry in the East Kingdom Order of Precedence. I knew going into this project (and mentioned in one of the first entries) that I’d be emblazoning devices belonging to deceased SCA members, but finding his obit on the Gazette was a surprise.

My favourite might actually be Brandubh Ó Donnghaile’s “Per pale argent and sable chapé ployé counterchanged” device, rightmost centre row. Two tinctures, a common field division and a rare one all combine to make a really distinctive but really simple device! Chapé ployé is one of those oddball divisions that lists tinctures in weird orders, designed to give a baby herald fits but at least I’ve seen it a few times already in this project…

One thing I really like about using Inkscape for this whole project is that an SVG file is ultimately just a fancy text file (XML, to be slightly more precise) so if you want to, say, swap your blue and purple colours out for other ones, you can open the SVG in a good text editor and run find-and-replace to swap your hexdecimal colour codes for new ones! Boom, instant tweaking to a deeper blue and (not seen in this batch, but soon) a less pink richer purple tincture!

Part Eleven is all per fess, all the time, including a bunch of really cool and rarely seen lines of division.

Part Eleven. Click for larger, see text for details.

Alys de Wilton’s “Per fess ermine and sable” is an elegant classic, and the only device in this batch with a plain line of division. We’re off into complex lines for the entire rest of this batch after that, including my personal favourite, Mariken van Oostbroeck’s “Per fess trefly-countertrefly azure and gules” in the middle of the bottom row.

“Per fess indented flory at the points” shows up twice, and although indented usually has a lot more points than just three, adding the extra complexity of the “flory at the points” forces you to simplify so as not to turn the middle of the device into a messy blur from any distance. Heraldry should always be clear and recognizable, after all!